


as ignorant as the dawn

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [244]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Coming of Age, Doriath, F/M, Gen, Luthien is interested in the outside world and now it's coming to her, Secret Relationship, because even when they're not there...they're there, discussion of Feanorians, set just post Haleth coming south...so late November early December 1852, title from Yeats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24417241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: She is Elu Thingol’s daughter, and Melian’s daughter besides. Her will is strong enough to ensure her good humor in the world outside. Luthien’s world is, of course, confined by the borders of Doriath: her Naples is the henhouse, her Russian tundra the seasonal fallow fields, her London or Paris the cowboys’ lodges, her China Sea the sunken duckpond on which Mama raises sleek white birds.
Relationships: Beren Erchamion/Lúthien Tinúviel, Daeron & Lúthien Tinúviel, Elu Thingol | Elwë Singollo & Lúthien Tinúviel, Elu Thingol | Elwë Singollo/Melian, Haleth of the Haladin & Lúthien Tinúviel, Lúthien Tinúviel & Melian, Lúthien Tinúviel & Original Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [244]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

Luthien sleeps with the letter against her breast each night. At first, she considered putting it under her pillow, for that would be more comfortable (and almost as sentimental), but she decided against that course. There was a greater risk that she would forget its place there, and that Isabella would find it when she came to make up the beds.

Luthien has been raised by two parents of principle, both very adamant that she not rely solely on her nurse’s good graces. She has made her own bed and dressed herself and brushed her hair with a hundred strokes each morning since she was tall enough to reach the little table where her pearl-handled brush is kept. But Isabella, having no family of her own, and having also as stubborn a will as those who keep her in employ, insists on tending to her _princesa’s_ chamber year in and year out. She places fresh flowers there, when the golden poppies bloom, and daily she dusts the wood-carved _Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe_ that Papa purchased in Mexico territory.

Isabella would surely find a carelessly hidden letter.

When she wakes, then, Luthien kisses Beren’s name, and locks the letter in the secret compartment of her desk. The key to the outer drawers hangs around her neck on a slim golden chain. After this little separation is performed, her mind wanders. Since Haleth’s return six days ago, she has often imagined not only Isabella, but Daeron, slipping into the quiet, sunlit chamber and hunting for evidence.

Evidence of what? It is folly. Daeron has no grudge against her. She chides herself in the looking glass, frowning as darkly as she can. Why should Daeron wish to force unrest between her and Papa, between Papa and poor Beren, who has been wandering the wide world these past years?

No, there is only one explanation for the wicked storm-cloud of a thought. Luthien has begun to be fanciful—more than she ever was—and she knows in her heart that no herb concoction of her mother’s can stall the flights of nervous imagination that she has yet to speak of to anyone. Indeed, she has already guessed their cause by further reflection on the links and coils of her mind and history: she has grown into the strictures of womanhood with none of its hard-won free choices. She is not allowed to grow _outwards_ , as any healthy thing must do.

As such, she worries.

Yet, she worries only in her room. She is Elu Thingol’s daughter, and Melian’s daughter besides. Her will is strong enough to ensure her good humor in the world outside. Luthien’s world is, of course, confined by the borders of Doriath: her Naples is the henhouse, her Russian tundra the seasonal fallow fields, her London or Paris the cowboys’ lodges, her China Sea the sunken duckpond on which Mama raises sleek white birds.

In wintertime, she breakfasts with her parents in the sunny kitchen. Isabella cooks alongside Mama, and dines at the same table with them and with Daeron, if he is at home. Papa does not have to be out at dawn in wintertime, for there is less work to be done. What work there is, his loyal under-ranchers manage admirably.

Ordinarily, the cattle herd will be halved in number by the end of autumn—all the steers sold or butchered, many of the cows already becoming heavy with their springtime calves. The best bulls for breeding are kept in secured pens, the yearlings separated out from the old, lest they fight and injure one another. Papa does not believe it does animals any good to be cooped up in confinement, especially not in the mild southern weather, and so he directs his ranchers to release them into the nearest fields.

Many mornings of the week (both before and after Haleth returned), Papa asks Luthien to accompany him in his rounds. When she was only as high as his hip, he explained that she would be mistress of the ranch someday, and would need to understand every wayward hoofprint.

As she grew older, he did not say that sort of thing any longer. He spoke more seriously of a rancher’s duties, of how government requisitions could cause as much harm as raiding thieves or wheat-stripping insects.

But no matter how he frames her future, Luthien understands better than ever as months and years creep by. She will remain in Doriath until she grows old and dies, if Papa has his way.

She does not blame him, for this scheme. Papa is a brilliant, bold, and deeply suspicious man. He cannot imagine her old, or himself gone, or Doriath without their family to rule its barns and pens and open lands.

 _How much_ , she asks herself sometimes, when the ache of missing Beren and the worlds she does not know burns too brightly for her to find sleep. _How much must I break my heart for you, to assure you that my heart holds all your love?_

Now, she has the letter. The letter and much outside news, though Haleth does not like to be trapped within Doriath and rides out every day. Twice she has dined at their table; once on the night she arrived, the night she passed Beren’s precious words and carefully written name into Luthien’s safekeeping.

“Finrod wrote it,” Haleth said.

“Finrod?” Luthien asked, and oh, _there_ was a story!

Perhaps Papa’s God and Mother’s many deities have worked in concert to bring Luthien a map of sorts, by which she may link and understand the happenings that turn and tumult under the eye of the free sun. The map writes itself, with the stories Daeron and Haleth and Beleg and Mablung reluctantly tell adding colored roads and winding rivers, peaked mountain questions, different marks for friend and foe.

In this way, she learns that Finrod, friend of Beren, writer of the precious letter, is kin to Maedhros Feanorian, cursed Feanor’s eldest son.

For a time, he was dead.

Haleth has come to say that his death will not last forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Papa, in one of his endearing bouts of generosity, has hired all of Haleth’s refugees. Luthien is grateful for this, in principle, but she privately refuses to bow to his underlying purpose.

His purpose is, of course, that by attending to the business swiftly and thoroughly, he shall prevent Luthien from mingling and asking questions, attempting to side with their cause by learning of it.

Though their cause has been affirmed, Luthien has every intention of mingling and asking questions.

She tells her mother so, during the sunlit hours of yet another morning. They are rolling dumpling dough very fine and thin, and Luthien says,

“I want to bring some of these to the new workers.”

When they are alone, she speaks Chinese with her mother. It is a language that depends more on inflection than English does, or even Spanish, though her father has spent so much time claiming the merits of his own tongue over Daeron’s French that Luthien believes it possible that Spanish contains every facet of necessary expression.

“They must be hungry,” Mama agrees. She prepares the round, woven baskets to hold as many dumplings as Luthien can carry.

In a few words, they have said a great deal. One has said, _I shall_ , and the other has said, _I know_.

They neither of them say anything about whether such an errand would be allowed.

Mablung directs her to the shanties that have been set aside for the newcomer.

“Oh, we double up,” he says, shrugging to hide his self-consciousness at being caught in a good deed. “We don’t mind. There’s children, with them.”

There are women, too. Luthien and her busy mapmaking, in childhood and womanhood, has come to appreciate the subtle eloquence of her sex. Haleth tells her much, for one so stoic. Maybe the women who have come fleeing from the north can teach her about the world, too.

But! She must not be selfish; she must not wish for word of their trials only for her amusement.

She brings them food, therefore, and asks for nothing on the first day.

Still, they reveal. It is no secret among them that they were held by Melkor Bauglir, to provide grueling, unpaid labor for the glory of his industrial dreams.

 _Industrial_ —the word is a curious one, to Luthien. It reeks too much of her father’s fight: to object to the philosophy that spurs an action, rather than to consider the heart of the actor. She remembers Melkor Bauglir, of course, and as much as she hates anyone, she hates him…but less for her own sake than for what, she understands, he has done to other people.

She almost wonders if he _has_ a heart.

Her interest in the recently rescued Maedhros Feanorian, whom Haleth knew as Russandol but confirms to be the _very_ _same_ , is second only to her interest in Beren’s doings. Feanor has been a thorn in her father’s side longer than Bauglir has been, but (to Luthien) he is a thorn of a different nature.

Papa does not see this, perhaps, because he considers only the philosophy, and not the heart.

Feanor was offensive to Papa because he was competitive and unscrupulous and very, very proud. Bauglir is offensive to Papa because he wants to take ownership of everything he touches.

And yet, Bauglir and Feanor were enemies, too. Since Bauglir could not have Feanor, he took his oldest son.

Haleth tells Luthien that Russandol was the sort who never had a chance of safety. _Yes, he was a leader of sorts, yes, all those here knew him, yes, he looked young but frail when I first saw him, and when I left him last he was on the edge of a blade, so close to death was he._

Luthien bides her time after that conversation, without much patience She is granted some reprieve, perhaps some heavenly approval, even, when her second visit to the newly redistributed quarters finds her seated beside a young woman named Maria.

Maria is still too thin, with awkwardly cropped hair and stained teeth, but she is strong and pretty and kind.

“You remind me of a friend of mine, miss,” she tells Luthien, over a bowl of rice and seasoned, broiled beef. “She stayed north of here. Belle was her name—the name we knew her by.”

“But she is well?” Luthien asks. The north is colder and fiercer, and nearer the mountain that they fled.

“In truth, miss,”—Luthien must ask them again not to address her so—“She was in a bad way. She’d helped get our run-out afoot, you see. Of course we didn’t know Haleth and hers would arrive. Belle nearly died for what she did. But no, she ain’t stay north for all that. It’s for Russandol.”

There is such admiration, in the woman’s clear dark eyes. Luthien feels a little thrill of it herself. No matter how much she assures herself that her principles are formed with warm and unflinching conviction, it is not an easy task to shake away her father’s ideas, her mother’s cautious counsel. If it were possible for her to do so, Luthien has sometimes thought (in the weary moments before sleep) that she would be happier if she could forget it all. Forget that there is injustice in the world, and children who suffer for their parents’ crimes or indiscretions. Forget that those children might be imperfect, even war-mongering, and yet still deserve compassion and protection.

She could force herself to forget, and live as a half-shell in a half-world. It will not do.

“I wonder,” she says now, doing her best to appear only intrigued, and not insistent. “If you would tell me more about this Russandol? And Belle, also. I know that you’ve all suffered so much, and you seem to love your friends dearly, who took it upon themselves to lead.”

And so it is that she hears more of Maedhros so-called Russandol than Haleth could ever tell her. She hears about a boy, tall and slim and “once very handsome, I daresay.” Over warm food of her own making, beside a comfortable hearth the likes of which she has never known life without, she hears of the mask, the beating, the thousand cruelties, the unshakeable resolve.

She hears, also, the name _Gothmog_. It is not one she recognizes.

Maria shudders as she speaks it. “Oh, no, miss,” she says. “Don’t mistake. They come as a mess of snakes, that lot. You’ve to know ‘em all, lest one bite from behind while you cut off the heads of the others.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Where has your mind been, all this week?”

Luthien looks up from her embroidery hoop. It is very calming, to choose among Mama’s fine silk threads, then to lightly sketch out her design (this time, a tree crowned with white flowers—a thing she has never seen), and finally, to begin her stitching. She has white and silver thread, green and brown and golden thread, and three different needles tucked in a scrap of cotton flannel at her knee.

Daeron’s question puzzles her.

“Do I seem absent? I often am, when I sew.”

He smiles; even laughs a little, in his next breath. “I said _all this week_ , _chérie_. You have been in a dreamland, and I feel barred at the gates of something quite mystical.”

Either Daeron grows sillier as he nears middle age—he is past thirty—or Luthien grows more impatient with time. How can Daeron think her a dreamer, when she has been only tired these last few nights at supper, after days in which she did not dream at all, listening to the tales of woe and wonder that Maria and the other travelers shared. Luthien has never been more ashamed of her comfortable life, or so eager to improve upon her usefulness to the world. She has had to seal her lips a dozen times over the desire to interject _what can I do?_

“There is nothing mystical about me, Daeron. You are the musician, the linguist. Is there no mood you cannot translate?”

He drums his clever fingers on the arm of his chair. Papa is reading one of Mama’s books with a furrow in his brow. Mama is weaving on one of her miniature looms. Both are as absorbed in their tasks as Daeron accused Luthien of being, but Luthien almost suspects that Daeron is still nervous that they shall hear what he has to say.

“Luthien,” he says solemnly, after another moment, “Why are you so entranced by the newcomers’ plight?”

She plucks one of her needles out of its flannel bed. She prepares her thread. “Have you been watching me?”

“I am always watching you.”

She sighs. “Yes, Daeron, I have been expanding my rounds to the ranchers’ quarters. I have brought some hot food and strengthening drink to the poor souls whom Haleth rescued. I do not doubt that Papa would think this naughty, but these people mean no harm. They were enslaved—they are skin and bones, scarred and bruised and hungry. What sort of question do you have for me?”

“Some of them,” Daeron says, in a voice pitched lower still, “Look almost like _his_ people.”

There are a few natives among the refugees, it is true. They are from tribes unknown to Haleth, or tribes now unremembered.

Luthien purses her lips. She had best not speak yet; she feels a little annoyed with Daeron, and that is unlike her.

“No,” she says.

“So you have had no news of him?”

The letter. Her curious fear. She is sure, very sure, that she never told Daeron of the locked compartment of her desk. It was one of the few secrets she kept from him in childhood.

The desk was purchased from a trader whose work intrigued Papa. The trader showed Luthien the hidden panel when Papa was not there; he lifted a finger to his lips as he did so. Still, Papa is very shrewd. If anyone knows about the desk, it _would_ be Papa—and though he would never enter her room to search it, he might tell Daeron—

No, no. Her mind is running away from her again.

“Daeron,” she says sweetly, turning her needle in her fingers as if its tail interests her, when in truth she wants to keep her hands from betraying their sudden tremors, “If anyone were to bring me news, it would be you. You _promised_.”

He smiles. He shuts his eyes. She used to tease him for looking like a cat, when he made such faces.

She is busy with her hoop when she feels him looking at her again.

Daeron says, “He was a bold boy, even when pain kept him down. I am sure no harm has come to him that he could not manage.”

“Oh,” Luthien agrees, her voice an imitation of her mother’s measured kindness. “I am sure you are right.”

That night, she enters her room with a heavy heart. She is a girl laden down with riches, and they have made her quickly greedy. She must set herself to rights. Why does she need Beren’s letter, when she has word from Haleth herself that he is safe and surrounded by friends?

Maria and the others may not need Luthien’s help this instant, but there are others. The unknown face of Maedhros Feanorian fills her thoughts with mystery again.

To love, to love, to love…she must be as brave as Beren is. He is not bold; he is quiet and steadfast, strung through with courage.

She kisses the letter half a dozen times, and burns it to tender, flaking ash in her candle flame. A phrase, here and there, flares out in heated ink—her name. His.

It is a sacrifice—pain freely chosen, by one who could shut her eyes against the world if she let herself. It is a sacrifice, and she does not even consider regretting it when she has heaped the ashes into her little fireplace, and dressed for bed.

(But she cries herself to sleep.)


End file.
